As Gov. John Kasich rolled out his new school-funding plan last week before administrators from
across Ohio, a Lorain County superintendent pleaded for help, worried about what the new funding
system might do to his district’s levy on the special-election ballot on Tuesday.

To help him sell the levy, Kasich promised to get him a computer printout of the plan’s effect
on his district. The pledge made many listeners perk up because such detailed computer simulations
are like gold to school officials, as they show the exact effect on each district. The simulations
weren’t supposed to be unveiled until this week.

Turns out that Kasich misspoke, because the administration isn’t yet handing out any such
computer runs, spokesman Rob Nichols said.“I don’t have the runs,” Nichols told
The Dispatch on Thursday, after the newspaper asked for the information to share with the
public
.

Pressed for more information, Nichols said Kasich’s education adviser, Barbara Mattei-Smith, had
personally worked the calculations on Ohio’s 600-plus districts but didn’t share them with anyone
else.

Thus, he said, the information could be considered “notes” and needn’t be shared
publicly.Then, on Friday, Nichols said Mattei-Smith actually had shared the information with the
Office of Budget and Management, so now it will be made public — but not for four days — after
Kasich’s budget is introduced on Monday.

Speaking of the school-funding plan, one name was conspicuous by its absence during two
conference calls with reporters, the presentation to school officials and a virtual town-hall
gathering at COSI Columbus: DeRolph. De Rolph is the last name of the plaintiff in the
school-funding lawsuit that prompted the state Supreme Court to declare four separate times — most
recently in December 2002 — that Ohio’s method is unconstitutional, Kasich hasn’t made satisfying
the DeRolph ruling a priority, although he did say last week, “We believe this plan is
constitutional.”

Lawmakers often have criticized the state’s five pension plans for assuming an 8 percent annual
rate of return because, they say, the figure seems overly optimistic. But the state’s biggest
pension fund — the Public Employee Retirement System — is showing a preliminary rate of return of
14.52 percent for 2012 — the seventh-best year stretching back to 1984, the latest year for which
records are readily available.

The earnings added a whopping $10.1 billion, raising PERS assets to $80.3 billion, spokeswoman
Julie Graham-Price said. Yet that performance still fell well short of the record year: a return of
25.33 percent in 2003.Overall, the fund’s 30-year return rate is 8.97 percent.

Price said PERS has no plans to follow the lead of other large pension systems by divesting
investments in manufacturers of guns or ammo. Leaders of a pension fund for Chicago employees sold
about $1 million worth of investments in three gunmakers, including the company that made the
Bushmaster rifle used in the December school shootings in Newtown, Conn.

Earlier, the retirement system for California teachers agreed to sell investments in makers of
guns and high-capacity ammo clips. And New York, which has the country’s third-largest pension
fund, is dumping more than $2 million invested with firearms manufacturers.

Pension officials in Connecticut and Massachusetts reportedly are considering similar
divestments.

Last week, a Democratic state rep chewed on Kasich because some of the finalists for an opening
on the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio seem to be closet Republicans. The vacancy must be
filled by a Democrat or independent.

Such a practice, as you might suspect, isn’t infrequent in state government.

Look no further than the Ohio Ethics Commission for an example: When Democratic Gov. Ted
Strickland needed to fill a GOP seat on the panel in 2008, he chose former Mason Mayor Betty Davis.
She was a Republican, all right — and the leader of Republicans for Strickland during the 2006
gubernatorial campaign.
Dispatch Senior Editor Joe Hallett and Reporter Catherine Candisky contributed to this
report.